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There are ways to remove all fog-of-war with mods and observe what the AI does, and the short answer is that, no, the AI does not generate stacks out of the pure ether, at least outside very defined situations.
Rebel stacks will materialize when a rebellion breaks out, and the Ashikaga are scripted to always have a certain minimum of units for Kyoto, and resurrected factions will spawn in with a few units; but that's it.
The debate never seems to abate, however, probably because of newer players not fully understanding how fog-of-war (fow), agent spotting, and recruitment works, as well as under-exploiting their economy.
Regular clans must recruit their units to form their stacks. They need to have the proper buildings to recruit, just like the player. This means you can actually halt AI recruitment of, say, Katana Sam, by sabotaging their Sword Dojo.
On Hard difficulty they get slight bonuses that enable them to recruit more easily, and on VH they get significant bonuses. These bonuses are reduced recruit cost, upkeep cost, and a couple of extra recruit slots. So on VH, an AI clan could basically recruit 4 to 5 Katana Sam in the time it takes the player to recruit 2.
Nonetheless, even on VH the AI clan has to be able to recruit those units, can have recruitment interrupted in the interim, and must march those units out to an army stack upon finishing recruitment.
On Normal, and especially on Easy, the player actually will be at an advantage against any single AI clan in terms of recruit and upkeep costs, and will have the same slot capacity, which, combined with superior human ability to actually lay abstract plans over time, means that the player can theoretically out-produce any single AI clan of an equivalent to even slightly larger (province) size.
Coming back to earlier, I've come to the conclusion based on what I've seen and heard over the last, nearly ten, years, that newer players usually under-exploit their own economy, resulting in them then over stating how much capacity the AI has, especially on Hard, Normal and Easy.
For example, many newer players don't realize that Metsuke can radically increase the incomes of a province; they don't take into account the "Admin Cost" modifier as their realm grows larger; they don't understand how important it is to have a good Koku surplus; they try to upgrade too many castles; they don't maximize the Finance Minister office to cut costs; they try to recruit way too many samurai units, way too early; they may never use the Bribe action at all, which can save thousands of Koku for the same amount of troops; they turtle with large stacks of troops (draining monies through upkeep), rather than recruit big for a push and then "demobilizing" (disbanding) unnecessary units when consolidating gains; etc.
As a result, newer players often have far fewer troops than they could have, meaning they are less likely to crush threatening clans early enough, which in turn puts them into a cycle of trying to "play catch up" by layer early game, so they go into mid game way too weak, and then the cycle just gets worse. To top it off, they'll then kick off Realm Divide way too early, and that's when the overwhelming AI wave will definitely happen to them, if it hadn't already.
Newer players also don't seem to reckon fow, or they misunderstand how it works. One of the biggest misconceptions seems to be that if you send a Ninja into an area, he can run into hidden AI stacks, provided you move him around enough. The reality is that a Ninja can be in the same exact tile as an army stack hidden in forests, and the Ninja may still not spot them, resulting in this stack "materializing out of nothing" a turn or two later. Newer players also don't often understand that agent action success is seeded at the start of each turn, so you can reload as many times as you want, and that won't allow you to find a stack that the Ninja wasn't going to find, by using "trial and error" to search the whole area.
Newer players also tend to underappreciate the leveling effects of agents. So just like how Metsuke are usually underutilized in raising tax efficiency or bribing enemy units, Ninja are expected by newer players to be very effective at lvl 1 or 2: they aren't. They need to be buffed, and then groomed down a specific branch on their tree to actually start showing their true worth, not be jack-of-all-trades. Embedding Ninja into a stack also has different effects for the stack's spotting potential than simply having the Ninja in the general area.
So basically, newer players have weaker economies and less troops than they could have, which necessarily makes AI clans stronger by default. They then blunder into hidden AI stacks because they don't exploit the power of Ninja, or not uncommonly, don't even have any Ninja at all.
When confronted with the stacks, they then have limited tools at their disposal because of the under utilization of both Ninja and Metsuke, they have weird army builds, and/or they try to fight way too lobsided of battles: sometimes the best thing to do is strategically withdraw, hit the AI stacks when they're not at an advantage, and then push into a province.
Newer players tend to be either overly defensive when the AI invades, or overly aggressive when invading an AI province, while the ideal strategy is to actually move between aggressive and defensive smoothly and constantly as situations develop.
Even on Legendary difficulty, the AI doesn't get full samurai stacks with only one province, it's going to be ashigaru with just a few samurai units. Maybe if it was REALLY late into the campaign and that AI faction has a province with a gold mine that is well developed.
But... it doesn't. Even when one faction grows to 20+ provinces I've never seen them field more than 6-8 stacks at any one time, something the player can easily replicate if you manage your economy well enough
I have to concur with the rest, you should just stick with Civ. Critical thinking might not be your thing
Magnificent post - Doffs cap
胜兵先胜而后求战，败兵先战而后求胜
and you have folks with thesis discussion on attack+4 is way better than armour how to win every battle against full bot stack how much armour is optimal for cavalry smh
Plus other blatant cheating like the AI being at peace with you yet when they declare war they can just stay in your borders.
We can't program AI so let's just make every AI churn out a full stack every 2 turns.
You get close to winning and every AI just starts pulling out full stacks. Hahaha, I mean I could still win the campaign but still boring. Defeating 20 stack after 20 stack after 20 stack after 20 stack after 20 stack is just boring.
Defeat one Otomo full stack. Okay.....
Defeat one Chosokabe full stack. Okay....
Defeat another Otomo full stack. Yawn... Okay.
Defeat another Chosokabe full stack. Yawn... Okay.
Defeat a third Otomo full stack. YAAAAAWN. BORING.